Status Check

I spent the first week of December on the road taking care of family business, which obviously did not leave much time for practicing or posting. However, I did make some tweaks right before I left. The Daniel Defense Omega 12 rail (the right one, this time) should arrive on Thursday, so I will look forward to getting it installed before my next range trip. I also removed the carry handle sight from the Musket and put the TR24G on it. The 2.5-10×32 has returned to Ascalon in the mean time.

I have been shying away from putting the TR24, or really any 1-4x optic, on the Musket because my initial impression was always negative. When set to 1x, the fixed FSB is very visible through the optic. And since the TR24 is mounted low enough to be what would be considered an absolute cowitness, the front sight actually sits right in line with the vertical post of the TR24G reticle, with the wings framing the glowing triangle. Now, normally I would consider this a good thing, as it presents a decent little sight picture. Here is a quick picture I snapped while balancing the rifle on the back of a patio chair. You will have to forgive the slight blurriness of the reticle, this is my first ever attempt at a “through the scope” photo, and I wasn’t very stable.

However, my problem comes from parallax. If my head is perfectly centered behind the optic, everything is fine. But if I’m off by even a few degrees, the front sight drifts around the sight picture while the reticle remains stable on target. This is extremely distracting, and the reason that I have always immediately rejected this kind of configuration. Here are two pictures illustrating what I’m talking about.

When zoomed up to 3x or 4x, the FSB is a shadow and far less distracting (but can still be seen drifting around the sight picture in certain lighting conditions). I want to challenge myself to see if I can overcome this distraction. The Marines have been shooting with 4x ACOGs on the M16A4 for a long time now, and have taught themselves to overcome this kind of issue. I don’t see why I cannot train myself to do the same.

I will also admit to a bit of concern on my part, as I would absolutely hate to buy an expensive fixed 3.5 or 4x optic only to hate using it due to the sight shadow problem. The battle in my mind between the TA11H or an Elcan SpecterOS 4x is still raging.

In all, my initial findings through dry practice is that as long as I focus on the target, the drifting front sight post does not bother me as much. It is still distracting, but slowly improving. I want to take this configuration to the range soon and see how it pans out.